The spring-like weather continues.  We have remained about at the freezing mark today, in spite of some afternoon sunshine; still, this isn't typical February weather and with only a couple inches of snow on the ground, we are wondering if we are going to skip winter altogether.  There may have been a groundhog out and about today - animals must be as confused as we are with this weather - and if he/she made the determination in the morning when there was no sign of sunshine, it would have been that spring is just around the corner.  This afternoon it would have been a different forecast, one for six weeks more winter.  Lots of folks around here hope the groundhog was a late sleeper and came out into sunshine; but just as many are happy with our mild winter so hope the "chuck" was out early and we'll have no more winter than we've already had.  I say it's anybody's guess and we have to get through March before we're on the other side of whatever this is.

I'm thinking the crazy weather has had a huge influence on the national political scene.  I can't imagine that there has ever in history been as nutty a campaign season as this has been.  Not just politics - lots of areas seem to be feeling the effects of some sort of weird influence from outer space or something.  School districts are struggling as never before to comply with silly state regulations, towns are having to consider consolidating schools with other towns, and school boards and town officials are going crazy trying to figure out budgets for voters in less than a month.  The "relief" our legislators have recently agreed to on the school issues will no doubt be short-lived and somewhere, somehow, there won't be enough money unless taxes are raised again, and again.

And how about the lawlessness that's taken over everywhere.  The guy up in Troy who stole a cat from a home and then went back and hung out in the homeowner's basement - I understand he probably wasn't playing with a full deck, but what worries me is what happened to the cat?  Or cats, since they suspect he's taken two others.  Some guy robbed the general store in Cabot last night, the Joe's Pond Country Store was robbed a few years ago (and the robber apologized as he fled with the money), and  Hastings Store was robbed in the middle of the night a few weeks ago.  It used to be that these things happened so infrequently around here we were all stunned to learn of them; I'm afraid now we expect there will be a new report on every evening news broadcast of one or more of these things happening, including much worse than the above.  We could blame the media because these kinds of things probably have always happened but we just didn't know about it right away like we do now.   Really, I think these things used to happen more frequently on nights there was a full moon - but there just aren't that many full moons to cover that theory.   I'm sure sociologists and psychologists have their own ideas, but I think we can blame at least some of the nuttiness on this freaky weather.  If it were 30 below these nights, it would cut down on the crime activity substantially, I bet.